OC Sheriff: California’s ‘Sanctuary State’ Bill Is About ‘Sticking it to Trump’

ASSEMBLYMAN TIM DONNELLY15 Jul 2017Orange County, CA

A California Sheriff said this week that the Democrat-sponsored “sanctuary state” bill — barring all local law enforcement statewide from cooperating with federal immigration authorities — is “all about sticking it to Trump.”

Orange County (OC) Sheriff Sandra Hutchins told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that the bill’s author, Senate President pro Tem Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles) — who admitted during a public hearing on this bill that “half his family is here illegally” — has characterized SB 54 as the only way to “stop the Trump deportation machine.”

Hutchins added that DeLeon’s bill will not only put at greater risk the safety of the general public by shielding dangerous criminals from deportation but it will also further endanger the very illegal aliens that De León claims he wants to protect (emphasis added):

The author [DeLeon] states that this will prevent local law enforcement from doing immigration enforcement on the streets. We never have done immigration enforcement on the streets. We have no desire to do that. And we’ve not been asked to do that by the Trump administration.”

So this bill would prohibit me as a sheriff from notifying ICE of someone who’s in custody for potential felony driving under the influence, domestic violence, human trafficking, rape of an unconscious person. I would not be able to notify them [ICE]. They would be released to the street.

And then what will happen is ICE will go out — they’re not going to let these people go — they’re gonna go out and do search warrants on homes. And then people who are here illegally or undocumented, and have not committed crimes, they’re going to get scooped up too.

So this bill does not do what it says it does.

Carlson raised the question of whether Orange County could defy state law and enforce federal immigration law, and Hutchins said that local law enforcement would be at risk of prosecution by the state.